– One thing that makes Colin Firth blush: two thousand people singing him “Happy Birthday” (on his 50th birthday, September 10, when The King’s Speech first wowed Toronto). The actor considered most likely to win an Oscar this year shares more embarrassing moments with The New Yorker’s Lizzie Widdicombe, who describes him as: “the British actor best known for playing variations on the repressed-but-sexy English gentleman.” On the other hand, Firth himself says the English are “very paradoxical people” for whom “It doesn’t take much to get them to let their hair down—soccer, alcohol, music, or general excitement.”

– Director Richard Eyre, who for a decade has been running the UK’s largest theatre complex– the National Theatre (which he calls “the best job in the world”) — offers various choice nuggets to The Guardian. Actors Judi Dench and Ian McKellan stand out to him: McKellan’s performances, he says, “form like crystals in a saturated solution.” All really good actors are “very bright…you can’t be stupid and a good actor. You may be inarticulate, you may not be highly educated, but all good actors are quick-witted, some of them dazzlingly so. All you do is guide them.”

As a director, he may be known for handling actors but he insists that it’s a misconception that the director has all the answers: “What you’re encouraging the actor to do is ask questions. You’re not saying this character is such and such a thing, and it’s your job to play it, because then you’re depriving the actor of the sense of discovery. They’re the people, in the end, who have to take ownership of the work. They go on in front of 1,000 people. You don’t.” During the interview Eyre’s self doubt is brought to surface. He admits as he dismissed retirement: “I can’t think of anyone I admire who isn’t fueled by self-doubt. It’s an essential ingredient…It’s the grit in the oyster.”